employer

The 404 211: Where Wilson wears a BeenVerified condom all day

Our reservoir of embarrassing stories about Jeff is bottoming out, so we're happy to welcome his old chums from BeenVerified.com to refill the glass. Josh, Ross, and Jay are ushering in a new generation of background checks for employers and job seekers, but today they're not afraid to use their powers for evil to dish the dirt on our fellow co-host. They also help us weigh in on virtual larceny, the problem with young whippersnappers, how to answer a professional call of doodie, and Josh spouts praise for his favorite luxury gadget: the $5,000 toilet.

We spend the first half of the show talking to the guys about their brand-new company, BeenVerified. They're no strangers to starting innovative sites, and this one is no different. In an age where employers are starting to perform pseudo background checks through social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace, BeenVerified takes it a step forward and offers a background checking service for employers and job seekers alike. After talking to Josh, Ross, and Jay, we're afraid to see how many skeletons in our respective closets, but here's the beauty of the site: users must approve the release of their information to the public before anyone can see it, so if don't want to be exposed, just say no! Of course, seekers will benefit from being an open book in general, so let that freak flag fly. Best of all, you can apply it to other transactions in your personal life, for example, screening Craigslist meetups, online daters, and nannies. Listen to today's knee-slappin' show and check out the animated short below for more about BeenVerified.

Episode 211 Download today's podcast … Read more

How do you hire good employees in Latin America?

I'm asking the question about how to hire well in Latin America because of Red Hat's success in Latin America, as well as my own company's download rates and incoming leads from Latin America, but it could very well be generalized to, "How do you hire employees in areas where your company has no physical presence?"

I don't know. For months I've been meaning to hire a pre-sales engineer/consultant down in Brazil or Argentina, but I haven't the first clue as to how to find someone capable of working alone so … Read more

The open-source job shortage

I spent some time today with the IT team of a large enterprise. There has been talk of an open-source job boom, but what I heard today suggested a relative dearth of critical open-source talent.

In this company's case, the IT team needs developers with deep MySQL experience. It's easy to get a cursory knowledge of MySQL or other open-source technology, but that's not what this enterprise needs. It needs someone that knows how to scale MySQL to hundreds of millions of transactions. It's not a question of whether the technology can handle it, but rather … Read more

Some ex-Microsofties pine to leave the Googleplex

Google is dominating Microsoft, right? Microsoft hasn't a clue, right?

According to a collection of blog posts from people that have worked at both Microsoft and Google, there's much more than meets the eye. In particular, it would appear that Microsoft, crusty thirty-year old that it is, has learned quite a bit about how to add process to enable (somewhat) smooth functioning at scale.

Google? Not so much.

As one ex-Microsoftie who joined Google, only to decide to return to Microsoft, puts it:

This orientation [at Google] towards cool, but not necessarily useful or essential software really affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter.… Read more

Headhunter dishes on why people leave Google

We all know the story about why people work at Google. Innovative technology, market power, one day in five to noodle around with your pet project, lavish benefits, blah blah blah. But why do they leave?

The commute sucks.

Well, at least that's one of the five reasons headhunter firm Binc included in a list of five common gripes listed by departing Google employees Binc has interviewed.

If you're an engineer who wants to stay in Silicon Valley, leaving Google might not fix your commute, and it's pretty likely your new boss won't provide you with … Read more

The best way to retain top IT talent

Baseline Magazine suggests eight ways to find and retain top IT talent. Citing Gartner, Baseline comes up with some solid strategies, but misses the one that I keep hearing over and over from savvy CTOs and CIOs: Open source.

As Jon Williams, CTO of NBC's iVillage, told attendees at the Open Source Business Conference, open source is an "incredible staff retention tool," helping to motivate and retain top talent. They want to go where the most interesting projects are. Open source is the epicenter of interesting IT.

So, while Baseline suggests "providing lunch or offering soft … Read more

At Google, fewer 'Nooglers'

Google's voracious appetite for new hires has eased off for the first time since the company went public in August 2004. In the last three months, the search giant added only 6 percent, or 889 people, to its employee roster--bringing Google's worldwide headcount to 16,805, according to the company's latest quarterly filing released Thursday.

That percentage is down nearly a third from the previous quarter's hires (2,130 new employees from June 2007 to September 2007) and off a third of its average quarterly hiring rate since June 2004, according to CNET News.com calculations.… Read more

America's new jobs: We don't need no education, just comfort

If you're looking for a job in the next few years, here's some good news: A college degree is not required for over 81 percent of the jobs on the list. Well, I suppose that's good news if you want one of the jobs that doesn't require a degree. Funny enough, I'm betting that the vast majority of people reading this blog don't actually need a degree to do their job, so perhaps Pink Floyd was right. Perhaps "we don't need no education."

Here are the top-10 jobs the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected the U.S. economy will add through 2016:

Registered nurses (587,000); Retail salesperson (557,000); Customer service representative (545,000);… Read more

No one in the UK wants to work in open source...or tech, for that matter

The Times today released its annual "Top 100 Graduate Employers" and professional services dominate the field. In fact, it's difficult to spot many technology companies on the list at all.

What gives?… Read more